NBC Has a Hit with The Voice; What’s That Mean For Their Comedies?

The Voice is officially a hit for NBC: it’s ratings increased 10% from its impressive debut for its second episode, beating the likes of Glee and Dancing with the Stars. Regardless of how you feel about the show, it’s great news for NBC, who has needed a hit very badly for a very long time. Here’s the question that’s relevant to our interests: what does this mean for NBC’s comedies?

On the one hand, this takes the pressure off of the Thursday night lineup to be the breadwinners for NBC, as The Voice can be the moneymaker that pays for the less popular but more prestigious fare. On the other hand, if NBC thinks it can just fill its lineup with more musical competitions and get better ratings, that isn’t great.

Rreally, I think this is a positive thing. NBC isn’t going to give up on comedies completely no matter what, and the success of The Voice does nothing to inform how they’ll select which sitcoms make it to the network. They may try more stuff like this in the future, but Thursday night isn’t where they’ll put it. If this huge, breakout hit was a middling multicam sitcom in the vein of $#*! My Dad Says, we’d have reason to worry. But I’m happy to see the broadcast network that “gets” comedy better than any other have some major success for once, even if it’s not from a comedy program